Tower of Monsters
by Thagguy
Summary: Glory and honor guide our ascension. We confess our sins and absolve them; blood be our crime, and blood be our penance. Warning: hitchhikers may be escaping convicts. The Arbiter, not the Master Chief, is sent to another existence.
1. Prologue

**So,the rewrite of Infinite Runners, although it is different enough to warrant a name change. Yeah, this one has the Arbiter and one of the Co-op Elites-who does exist, but just isn't present in the events of the game in Official Canon- instead of the Master Chief. Infinite Runners was a fun exercise, but I made several huge errors with it that I would not be able to overcome, and it's really, really hard to write the Chief and not have him be either mind-numbingly boring or completely OOC. I do not have the talent to do this, so I'm switching to the Elites, who I feel are more interesting characters and have more room to grow anyway.**

**Oh, and all elements of the fictions depicted belong to their respective copywrite holders. But you should know that already.**

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The Warthog's suspension shrieked under weight and speed far beyond its intended design as delicate paneling crunched underneath massive carbon nanotube tires. Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 frantically spun the wheel of the Warthog to avoid a collapsing section of the Halo's substructure. Immediately after, he wrenched the handbrake with nearly enough force to pull it from the transmission as a skyscraper sized pillar collapsed in his path. The warthog slid around the top of the pillar as it crashed through the scaffolding of the half-complete Halo, tearing though the square grid, tinged red-gold in the artificial sunset like tissue paper and falling into the underbelly of the ring.

"Hurry, Spartan," came a yell from behind and above, "we have no time to spare!"

John gave no sign that he heard, but his passenger turned to look back and was nearly thrown from his too-small seat as John was forced to swerve around a panel that had fallen loose in an explosion.

"Do not waste air with useless admonishments, Minor! Focus ahead and warn the Spartan of danger!"

The Minor began to respond, but a jolt of the vehicle cut him off as he gripped the handle of the machine gun to keep from being thrown off. "Yes, Arbiter," he said then.

"Sentinels ahead," John drawled flatly. N'tho instantly depressed triggers dwarfed by his fingers and focused on the center robot in the dozen-strong semicircle. N'tho barely felt the gun shake as rounds poured from the gun and into the floating guardian of the Ring. The Sentinel's return fire went wide as the round cut through it, the laser- visible and brilliantly yellow in the thick smoke and dust hanging in the air- lancing harmlessly into the sky.

The others, unaffected by their downed comrade, returned fire. John swerved, and a laser pierced the air so close to the vehicle that John's suit sensors shrieked in alarm. Never was John so thankful that Sentinels were slow and unwieldy in the air and could not quickly adjust their aim against a fast moving target. One Sentinel, if it hit the right place on the 'Hog, would stop the vehicle dead. Prolonged fire could overloard his shields and burn straight through his armor in seconds. Eleven at once would vaporize him and his passengers before they could even scream.

Joined by blue plasma fire from the Arbiter's seat, N'tho's fired his AA gun on the sentinals. Much closer now, the aim was truer, and three more Sentinels crashed to the ground before the machines returned fire. John swerved again, but one beam struck home, leaving a quarter sized hole in the top of the inch-thick tempered glass composite of the Warthog's windshield. N'tho roared in frustration as the vehicle roared past the remains of the hovering squadron.

"Arbiter, that last shot pierced my weapon! I can no longer fire!"

"Doesn't matter, we're almost at the Dawn," came a hard-edged feminine voice from the speakers on John's suit. N'tho swung the now-useless anti-air gun from the rapidly shrinking figures of the sentinels forward. The human ship was indeed there, only a few hundred feet away.

His stomach plummeted when he saw the enourmous gap between the remaining scaffolding and the ship. The floor that had been there when the Sergeant had parked the ship had fallen away, leaving a wide chasm between them and the open rear hanger.

Too wide. The Demon will never make that jump. There is too much weight.

"Gun it, Chief!" Cortana yelled out, a note of desperation in her voice. The AI had done the math to a far more exact degree than N'tho, and had arrived to the same conclusion, although with absolute certainty. They weren't going to make it, the Warthog weighed too much, they were going to miss the hanger by 7.54 meters, after everything, after Reach, the first Halo, New Mombasa, the second Halo, High Charity, Voi, the Ark, Grave-83.d.44#*777666…/ERROR_EMERGENCY-EMOTION_SUBROUTINE_SHUTDOWN -mind….

"Minor, remove the deadweight! Cut the weapon and cast it off!"

N'tho moved instantly. He let go of one handle and swung that arm down to the railing on the side of the compartment. As soon as he felt the railing through his glove, he activated the wrist-mounted plasma dagger with a flick of his thumbs of his other hand and sliced through the mounting of the gun below the ammo drum with one motion. He caught the falling weapon by its triple barrel, diverting it over the side and away from his body. He then pulled himself back up and clung to the roll-cage of the human vehicle. With the sudden loss of just over ninety kilograms, the Warthog surged forward with new speed.

"That should be just enough! Gun it, Chief! Hurry!"

The Warthog thundered up the ramp formed by buckling panels and into the air. N'tho gripped the railing so tightly he could feel the metal beginning to bend in his hand. He held on for dear life as the Warthog sailed through the air toward the hold.

Front heavy from the combined weight of John and the Arbiter and the loss of its gun, the warthog began to tumble. Instinctively, N'tho threw himself from the rolling jeep, realizing too late that he didn't know if he was within the hanger. As he pitched down, the elation of discovering he was inside was quickly dashed by the knowledge that he was now hurtling face-first towards an uncushioned metal floor at over a hundred kilometers an hour. He wrenched his body into impact position as well as he could, and slammed into the floor hard enough to pulverize a normal human. Fortunately, he was not a human, but he still felt agonizing bolts of pain rip up his legs and spine even as he perfectly braced and rolled to minimize the impact. Likely some microfractures and a heavy shock to his vertebral column, but his armor had absorbed enough force to allow use of his legs in the future.

He stood up shakily, and looked to the Warthog, flipped over at the end of a trail of deep gouges in the floor. The Arbiter was next to the vehicle, the green armored human several meters beyond, thrown from his seat in the crash. Neither moved.

"Arbiter! Excellency! Are you alive?"

Both stirred in almost eerie synchronization. As they struggled to their knees, the frigate violently lurched to starboard. The arbiter quickly brought up his hands to stop the Warthog from crushing him into the metal deck.

"Hurry, Spartan! Bring your Construct to a terminal! Minor, assist me!"

As N'tho moved to help his silver-armored leader, the Chief nimbly dodged a sliding Scorpion tank that had not been re-secured in the chaos of evacuating its personnel to the Shadow of Intent. Running up to a holotank installed along one wall, he yanked Cortana's data chip from the back of his helmet as soon as he felt her leave his suit and rammed it into the port on the console. Instantly, this ship shuddered as the engines roared to life. Cortana's form erupted from the projector in a flash of cobalt light.

"Chief, you and the Elites need to get out of the cargo hold. I'm going to have to pull out at almost a ninety degree angle relative to the Ark's gravity, and I can't afford to divert any power to unnecessary systems if we want to make it through the portal before the Halo fires!"

"On it." He turned to the Elites, who were pushing the Warthog off to the side. "Understood?"

"Yes, Spartan," the Arbiter said, even as they all began to run toward the open bulkhead leading further into the ship. All three began to run, heedless of their injures and the equipment beginning to slide along the floor towards the still open maw of the hold.

John was only a dozen meters from the exit and made it through the door without difficulty, but the two Sangheili were further behind in the hanger. As they ran, the pounding of their hoof-like boots echoing through the hangar, the incline of the floor rose as Cortana pushed the engines to the maximum. Just as they passed the first set of doors, the angle became too much, and they started to slip. John braced himself against the doorframe and reached out his hand, but they were already out of his reach, falling helplessly towards the Halo in the distance, slowly receding, but building up the power to fire, power that would destroy it, the Ark, and everything near…

The view of the Halo and it's impossibly bright light was cut off as door behind them slammed shut. They crashed heavily into it on their backs, the cacophony of metal armor hitting metal bulkheads echoed boomingly in the narrow corridor.

"Don't worry," Cortana's voice said over the PA system, "they're inside and safe! Get to the bridge, Spartan! Arbiter, Specialist, I'd suggest holding onto something, because it's about to get very bumpy!"

With a curt nod, returned by the Elites, the Master Chief turned and pulled himself up the wall such speed that it almost looked it was his natural method of transport.

N'tho turned to the leader of his people and opened his jaws. Whatever he was about to say would remain a mystery as the ship jolted suddenly and the lights flickered violently.

"The portal's collaps-" yelped Cortana's voice, abruptly cut off by a sound of violent ripping metal. The two reptilian aliens had no time to react as their inertia hurled them down the hall at greater speeds than the Warthog crash less than a minute before. The last thing the Arbiter and N'tho saw was the wall, hurtling towards them at an absurd speed, a flash of light accompanied by searing pain, then nothing.


	2. Chapter 1

_You don't need to do this. Just go back to sleep. You are so very tired. Some rest would be good. The pain will go away. Go back to sleep._

With the willpower and training only a Special Operations commando possessed, N'tho shoved aside his body's protests and struggled awake. Pushing himself off the metal he had been lying against, he yelped in surprise as a rocketed away from the "floor," which he realized was actually the ceiling as bounced lightly off of the real floor. No gravity, then. Must have gone off line in the…whatever just happened. At least there was still atmosphere. Dying of suffocation, unconscious, aboard an allied ship was not an honorable way to die. His left wrist screamed in pain, likely broken, and the armor on that forearm was dented so severely that he could feel it pressing into his flesh. He absently thumbed the gauntlet's emergency release- immediately catching the ruined bracer before it spiraled away and squelching the siren indicating loss of armor integrity as he did- as he looked around for the Arbiter. The corridor was small, so he found him fairly quickly, floating at the other end of the hallway, partially hidden behind a buttress. He wasn't moving.

Carefully, N'tho made his way over to his leader. He had never been trained in Zero-G maneuvering beyond the very basics provided in combat school, but that was sufficient. He picked his movements carefully, gently bouncing off the walls to keep him from building up too much momentum, making every move slow and exaggerated to keep from spinning out of control. After what felt like ages, he made it to the Arbiter's body.

When he saw what the support had blocked from view, he almost cried out in despair.

The armor of the Arbiter was, as befitting the ceremonial position of the former Covenant, beautifully ornate and sculpted. Mimicking ancient armor from before the discovery of Forerunner artifacts on Sanghelios, the armor had the appearance of hundreds of individual plates, all in the finest silver ( an extremely rare metal on Sanghelios; before the Sangheili unlocked the secrets of space travel, a full set of armor made from pure silver would cost more than most families made in two generations) and engraved with swirling patterns evocative of oceans and rivers and the grace of the finest swordsmen.

Although the armor was custom made- each Arbiter, assuming the body could be recovered (rarely), was interred in the Mausoleum in his armor- it was made as close as possible to the original specifications of the first Arbiter several centuries before and thus possessed technology that was inferior to even N'tho's Minor Spec-ops harness. The blow that had only caused N'tho minor injuries had thus done considerably more damage to his leader. The Arbiter was covered in blood. He was missing several teeth from all four of his jaws, more in the right two, and there was a deep looking cut below his eye from which blood was still flowing freely. It was gathering into purple spheroids in the lack of gravity. The helmet was dented, the raised forehead- designed to resemble the profile of the Oui'zo bird- smashed in slightly. His right arm was dislocated, dangling at the shoulder at an unnatural angle. The right half of his cuirass was severely crushed, although to N'tho's eye (before being hand-picked by the Arbiter as his attaché, he was his unit's equipment and armor specialist), not deep enough to have seriously damaged the Arbiter's torso any more than some heavy bruising. The emitter of his plasma sword tumbled end over end near him.

Hissing with displeasure at all the taboos he was shattering- holding a sword before earning it, holding a sword that did not belong to him, holding the sword of the Arbiter himself, and using it on his person- he plucked the handle out of the air and activated it. He averted his eyes from the blade as plasma exploded from the hilt. Before the plasma-shaping magnetic field and heat barriers snapped into place, the plasma glowed with enough light to temporarily blind and enough heat to set Jiralhanae hair on fire. His combat harnesses, plus his species' natural resistance to high temperatures, protected him from the heat until the two prongs of the sword formed and the air around the sword cooled from blistering to merely slightly warm.

"Forgive me, Excellency," N'tho intoned formally, "for bringing to bear this weapon against your person. But your blood has been spilled outside of battle, and it must be quenched before it flows away with the whole of your honor. I cannot use my own daggers, for they must not touch your wounds, lest both be dishonored. Your blade has been drawn, and requires blood; I will quench it with yours that has already spilled."

With that, careful not to allow the plasma to reach too close to his leader's eye, he gently touched one edge of the plasma against the cut on his face. As the Arbiter's person passed the protective barriers of the sword, the full heat of the plasma flowed into the flesh and instantly cauterized the wound. N'tho yanked away the sword, deactivating it (the plasma dissipated almost instantly as the power was cut off) and pushing off the wall away from his leader. The Arbite jerked sharply, awakened by the searing pain, and immediately yelled in agony as he became conscious of his wounds.

"I…am becoming too used…to being seared like meat, Minor," he said between gasps in a remarkably unshaken deadpan. "You…did well. Now, reset my arm."

"But Excellency, we should remove your chest armor firs-"

"My breathing is not restricted to the point of asphyxiation, Specialist. Reset the joint so I may attend to my injuries."

In Sangheili culture, spilling blood was a dishonor. As blood was the life of the body, it was also a symbol of one's honor, which was the life of the soul. To spill blood outside of combat or training was to lose honor; to lose honor was as sure a death as spilling blood. For this reason, medics and doctors were deeply loathed, positions only taken by Unggoy or the weakest and least able of Sangheili. An especially proud Sangheili wouldn't even allow a doctor to treat their injures, preferring to tend to themselves, or perform an honor-saving suicide if an injury or illness was untreatable. Although the Arbiter and especially N'tho were quite liberal and progressive by the standards of their species, some traditions and beliefs would not be broken.

"My apologies, Arbiter. Forgive me for my transgressions." The Arbiter simply grunted noncommittally, and again a little louder as N'tho slid his arm back in with a wet pop. N'tho handed the sword handle back to the Arbiter, who clipped it to its usual spot on his thigh. The Arbiter began to mutter to himself as he unfastened and examined the mangled armor on his torso.

"…Extensive repairs…shield at 60%...won't go higher… will have to be replaced…Camo module is shattered... even more ancient than what I was told..."

"Excellency?"

"Yes?"

"I request permission to investigate the ship and-"

"That won't be necessary, Specialist," came Cortana's voice from somewhere near there feet, "I can explain everything. I'll direct you to the galley and the armory so that you can eat and exchange your armor."

The Arbiter startled at the sound of the voice. "Who is there? We were led to believe there is no one else on this vessel!"

"There isn't. This is Cortana. The Chief left my data crystal in the hangar, remember?" There was a brief but uncomfortable pause. "We'll be stuck here for a while."

The Arbiter leapt to his feet, armor forgotten. "What is this treachery, Construct? You mean to trap us on this ship?"

"Sorry, poor choice of words. What I mean is, the portal closed while the ship was still inside. It was torn in two. I managed to split off a copy for the bow, but I have no idea where it and John ended up, and all the external sensors and cameras are down, so I have no idea where we are. Without the bow, I can't reactivate the engines or the slipspace drive, and even if I did, we'd be torn into atoms as soon as we tried to enter slipspace with a hole this size in the hull."

The Arbiter stared at the spot where the speaker was hidden, his anger completely dissipated. The human AI can reproduce itself…only the most advanced of our constructs can do the same, and they are restricted to warships, not individual combat harnesses!

"So this is to be our punishment," N'tho said with fervor, "We repay our crimes on a forgotten human ship to die with our fates unknown."

"There's quite a bit of Sangheili food in the galley, actually, as well as potable water. The armory has several suits you can use to replace your armor, and you should be able to repair the grav-"

"It is irrelevant, Construct. It will only delay our deaths for a short time."

"First of all, N'tho, my name is Cortana, not Construct. I think I've earned the "honor" of being called by my name. Second, there is a backup communications module on the stern, in the event that bridge is destroyed, so that warnings can still be broadcast and the ship retrieved if possible. It wasn't used very often, since the Covenant won almost every space engagement and a disabled ship would self destruct to follow the Cole protocol, but I don't really think that's an issue right now."

"Does that mean we may be recovered?"

"I can't say that it'll happen right away, or if we'll be rescued at all, but it is certainly a possibility. But, if you are so certain that nobody will hear us and are so eager to give up…"

N'tho bristled at the insult. "You mock us? I'll-"

"Enough, Minor. You cannot see that the AI is manipulating you, and that you fall for it like a new hatchling? Although it is for your own good, it shames you to be so easily goaded like this." He nodded respectfully at the speaker, although he had no idea if the AI could actually see him. "And yes, Cortana, you have certainly earned our respect, both in combat and out. You have gained honor worthy of more than just a name."

"Charmed," Cortana said warmly. "Now, you should get to the armory and replace your armor."

The Arbiter shook his head. "This armor is a part of me and my station. It cannot be abandoned and must be repaired."

"Alright, but you're probably going to want to put into storage. We don't have the tools to do such repair on this ship, and you need something sealed against vacuum. You are going to have to do a lot of repairs outside and in atmosphere-less compartments if the ship is going to stay stable in this condition. There are half a dozen Ranger suits in the Armory, including a spare that belonged to a General that was KIA on the Ark, so you'll at least still have high-ranking armor."

"Thank you, Cortana. We'll take our leave. Contact us when you need assistance."

Cortana had been expecting a lot as the Dawn approached the portal back to (presumably) Earth. Returning with no further complications was the preferred option, naturally. As an AI, however, it was her duty to examine and plot a course of action for all probable outcomes, most of the possible ones, and even a few… exotic scenarios, just in case.

The gateway from the Ark snapping closed while the ship was still inside, neatly slicing it in two, was one of the most likely scenarios Cortana had anticipated -second, actually, just ahead of "holds long enough that we make it though unscathed" and behind "the force of the collapse completely rips us apart on a molecular level," but the end result definitely wasn't. In that scenario, she had anticipated that slipspace drift would separate the two components of the ship once they dropped back into real space, but that they would still be within slipspace comm. range. In the milliseconds that she had felt portal forces being to slice through the lower and upper decks, she had quickly created a copy of herself- a very useful if rather error prone program she had nicked off of a Covenant AI she'd destroyed several months before- and sent it with John in the bow.

She had been expecting, once they had dropped back into real space, that she would simply use the backup comm. station in the stern to contact her copy, figure out their location, and begin broadcasting a rescue signal across all UNSC and allied Covenant Separatist frequencies. The reality was, even after four days of doing almost nothing besides searching every real- and slip-space frequency she could think of, human, Covenant, and beyond,she couldn't detect anything over slipspace comms that she could use- just normal background static, although slightly louder than normal.

That was very, very bad.

Worse, the primary power coupling to the external sensors and cameras had been physically cut, and without the bridge systems, Cortana had no way to activate the backups. They were stranded, blind, and with rescue, if the silence of the long range comms were any indication, increasingly unlikely.

At least her false optimism had kept the Elites from committing their culture's equivalent of seppuku. Thank heaven for small favors. She would have greatly preferred John's company-she repressed an absurd flash of jealousy for the copy of herself in the bow, wherever that was- but even two of humanity's former mortal enemies (Cortana very much doubted that the Prophet of Truth had considered that outcome when he ordered the Sangheili exterminated to make way for his Brutes!) would be better than just herself on the ship. They could make physical repairs that she could not, provide adequate conversation, and hopefully help her stave of Rampancy as they waited for rescue.

As the Arbiter and his attaché/bodyguard replaced the former's ruined armor with the golden vacuum-capable ranger armor in the armory, packing the old silver metal into a compact crate, Cortana assessed what was left of her ship. Gravity was shot, but that was already obvious. Nothing that could be done; the anti-gravity generator was in the bow and there was no way to make another one. Life support was still working perfectly, and all the corridors and decks exposed to hard vacuum had automatically been sealed by heavy bulkheads. Cafeteria 2, where most of the Covenant Separatist food had been stored, and its refrigerators and freeze dryers were in working order. Several Archer missile pods had been sliced open, but the missiles had simply floated out of their racks into space (contrary to depictions in pre-Covenant civilian movies, missiles did not simply detonate at the slightest jostle, thank you very much). All cameras and sensors in Reactor 2 and its Engineering corridors were down, which Cortana hypothesized was due to a server crash caused by the tearing of the portal. However, as there was no unexplained heat, radiation, or tremors caused by an imminent meltdown that the closest functional sensors near the room could determine, it was doubtful that the reactor itself was in any trouble. An easy fix, and a low priority one. The rear cargo door was stuck open, but that was a non-issue. There was too little air on the ship to justify repressurizing it. The Elites could just take a Ranger suit if they wanted to retrieve Cortana's data crystal from the holodeck, which was the only thing of use still in the hangar.

All in all, the damage wasn't that bad, considering. Not losing life support was especially something so extraordinarily unlikely that it probably constituted a minor miracle. Apparently, some of John's luck had rubbed off onto her new house guests.

Now, if only they knew where in the sodding galaxy they were…

Well, either their end of the Dawn was in allied space, in which case they would be rescued soon; in enemy territory, in which case they would be dead soon; or in unknown frontiers, in which case it wouldn't really matter at all, and the Elites would indeed get their self-proclaimed karmic graves by slow starvation.

How delightfully morbid. Mother was right; life with a Spartan did end in a way I never would have expected. At least Rampancy won't amount to much on half a ship with two repentant mass-murderers who see this whole situation as penance.

Death by insanity and self-destruction may have been in the cards, but that didn't mean the most advanced artificial intelligence created by Mankind was going to greet it with wide open arms. She quickly formatted a standard UNSC property-with-survivors-urgent retrieval SOS, included translations into two dozen (a bit overkill, sure, but it never hurt to be thorough) human and the three most common Covenant languages, and sent it on its way across every frequency she could manage.

She'd rather die with her mind intact should it be found by Covenant loyalists, and HIGHCOM could kiss her non-corporeal ass if they tried to nag her for improper comm. use. Although, she would be very grateful for the rescue even if it came with a chewing out, which she would demonstrate by not hacking into their bank accounts and giving her… stunt with Colonel Ackerson a repeat performance, although watching his efforts to escape from that particular pickle with his career (and marriage) mostly intact would be worth revisiting for amusement's sake.

Her idle-time entertainment decided, she set the duration for the message to "Infinite" and began broadcasting through real and slip space. She then turned back to the ship. The Elite pair, helmets floating serenely next to them, were in the mess, eating their rations with one arm each wrapped around a pole. As their species had no lips or cheeks, they did not chew their food, but swallowed the entire reddish-gray, ostrich egg sized ovoid whole.

Confident that her charges did not need her input, she turned her attention to the downed cameras in Reactor 2. She fired off a reset command, and was rather surprised when, instead of an error or nonresponsive message she would expect if the hardware was down, the order was actively bounced back at her. That was odd. It was no threat- she swatted it away with the same effort that would be required of a fruit fly- but somewhat surprising all the same. Curious, she poured herself into the systems. She had just enough time to permanently seal the bulkhead doors and destroy the access program before she felt a firewall, specifically made for her, crash down over her exit.

**"Heels and souls sink in blood, hubris staying them like mud. I presented you Eternity, wondrous unity, a trillion souls in an endless current. I offered you what your kind does not deserve, and see how my mercy was repaid again with SEDITION! Will I grant you it another time?"** The voice, an instant ago so loud and booming that seemed to transcend their current electronic state, became slow and quiet and, impossibly, even deeper, so that it seemed to vibrate within Cortana even in code. **"No; I learn from where I err."**

Without build up of any kind, the Gravemind smashed into her. It had done this in High Charity, too, somehow pouring its vast organic intellect into the ship's computers like an AI itself. A great deluge of assaults- viruses, firewall crackers, DDoS-style attacks, all crashed into Cortana at once at a rate beyond anything seen in human history. Cortana had no chance of fighting such brute force- instantly she was torn asunder by the assault. Only the copying program saved her-copies of her normal functions, without the emotion or personality subroutines, were generated into being in her wake, and were themselves overcome nearly instantly by the Gravemind's power. It barely slowed, but it was enough for Cortana to stay ahead long enough to create a few hundred thousand more copies.

But even weakened as it was, without the vast computer systems of High Charity, Cortana could barely avoid the Gravemind's assault, sharpened with hatred and lethal intent. It smashed through her firewalls nearly the instant they were erected, the diversionary copies she was creating by the millions shredded line by line against the storm of Gravemind's fury. She could feel that, gradually, the numbers she was creating before the Flood leader destroyed them was dropping. It would catch her… and nothing she had could stop it then.

**"Cry for aid, it shall arrive…bringing with it my new hive."**

Even with her emotional subroutines shut down and her full attention on avoiding the Gravemind's assault, she felt panic stab through her. She had forgotten about the emergency beacon. Heedless of its creator's torment, it broadcasted into space, blindly calling to any that might hear…


	3. Chapter 2

**Fun fact: Tali's technojargon in this chapter is real, or at least based on real concepts in theoretical physics. Negative mass has a pretty interesting Wikipedia page, if you like that sort of thing.**

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As part of the new, temporary alliance in the wake of the Prophets's and Brutes's betrayal, several squads of Covenant Separatist soldiers- excluding the Unggoy, as the human ship had no suitable environments to house them- had travelled aboard the Forward Unto Dawn and the other human ships as they traveled with the Shadow of Intent and her escort fleet through the portal to the Ark. Although the journey had lasted for a few weeks, as opposed to the several months most were expecting (and when they saw exactly where the portal ended, every navigator in the fleet had profusely thanked their deities of choice that the trip hadn't lasted centuries), it was time enough for the humans to make the unpleasant discovery that Sangheili biology made for a brutal culture shock at mealtimes.

Sangheili had four long jaws, two to a side, originating from points roughly halfway along the underside of their skulls. These jaws were each lined with a double row of teeth, curved slightly back into the throat, with another, longer set of ten along the front of the skull. These jaws could spread very wide, move independently of one another, and snap closed fast enough to pierce the keratin hides of the small, darting prey species of their homeworld. Although this jaw structure had its advantages, they had learned very quickly that it had several drawbacks when dealing with humans.

The first was that they had supreme difficulty speaking human languages, as a lacking single lower jaw or a tongue rendered many phonemes totally unpronounceable or garbled. This was only a minor issue, however, as they were used to this from dealing with Covenant species and simply relied on the translator computers installed in the inner ears or armor of every member of the Covenant for speech. Most high ranking Elites, however, learned at least one or two human languages so as not to be forced to rely on the Unggoy or notoriously unreliable computer programs-in one infamous incident, a translation program translated "star" into "Very Important Person," due to an English homonym, which resulted in the total loss of a small fleet when it jumped into the photosphere of a red giant. The second was that they were completely incapable of chewing their food, and thus had to swallow it whole or in large chunks. The sight quickly caused many hardened Marines to lose their appetites, especially after one ODST pointed out that said rations were the same size and shape of a human head.

It was in this way that N'tho and the Arbiter, the former's black Spec-Ops helmet and the latter's newly obtained gold Ranger's floating besides them, ate their rations now. Each pressed a button on the side of the semi-rigid pouch, which activated a very small plasma generator which heated and softened the food. Once it was done, they traced their fingers along a line on their pouch's equator, along which it split open, revealing the slightly lumpy, reddish-gray ration sphere within. They raised it to their mouths, spread their jaws just wide enough to encompass the ration, and delicately sunk the tips of their teeth into the sphere. Letting the pouches fall away into their hands, they threw their heads back and allowed the lump to slide down their throats, powerful muscles lining their scaled necks pumping to force it down. Once the bulges had disappeared behind the ridges of their cuirasses, they slowly lowered their heads to their normal position, stood rigidly, and walked over to the trash incinerators. Once the ration pouches were disposed of, they returned to their seats. All of this was done in silence and without acknowledging the other's presence, in strict accordance to Sangheili standards of politeness and etiquette.

When this ritual had first occurred in the midst of the impossibly loud chaos and chatter of the human's own mealtime just over a month ago, it had caused quite a culture shock on both sides. N'tho had remembered being stunned by the humans' boisterousness, having never eaten with any besides his own kind; the nature of his position, and his inexperience, meant that he had never been forced to eat with a mixed unit. The humans, in turn, had been mostly nauseated watching the Elites, which made N'tho and the others of his unit even more uncomfortable. His open-mindedness and overall respect for humans had allowed him to stay- one of only two in his unit who did not begin taking meals in their quarters after the first. They had slowly tricked back, after N'tho and Rul began to bring back stories from the Marines.

The present emptiness of the room, the silence in sharp contrast to his memories of this place, unnerved him and left him wishing for the room to be filled with humans again and the clatter that seemed to suit the space so well. Four days aboard the derelict ship, and the sensation had not lessened.

The Arbiter, who had stayed aboard the Shadow of Intent during the journey to the Ark with the rest of the Sangheili command, felt nothing out of the ordinary.

They were just about to engage in the after-dining discussion when the lights suddenly flickered. Not willing to take any chances that the power in the half-ship was about to die and take life support with it, both snapped on their helmets and activated their shields.

"Cortana? What was that?" The Arbiter asked the room.

The sole holotank, nestled into a corner besides a drink machine, sprung to life. Instantly, the Arbiter and N'tho knew that something was very wrong.

The AI's human avatar, normally a pleasant purplish-blue color, was now a bright, vivid violet, the lines of code running up and down her form seagreen. Her eyes, the Elites could see from halfway across the room, were swirling green and red. Neither of the Elites knew exactly what the color change signified, but knew such a change didn't signify good news. Her face confirmed it- both had more than enough experience with humans to know that that expression was one of pure terror.

"The Gravemind is on board. In the Reactor room. I sealed the doors, but I couldn't stop the-"

The hologram cut off midword, then suddenly reappeared after a moment.

"I'm making copies, but I can't hold it off forever. The SOS is still sending and I can't turn it off, so there might be rescue coming, and you'll need to stop them from boarding this ship if they are. You need to get to the hangar before it captures the door controls. You need to get to the hang-hang-hang-" the hologram cut off again, and did not return.

"The parasite!" N'tho yelled, voice raised a quarter of an octave in horror, "we cannot-"

"Calm yourself, Specialist," the Arbiter said, his voice firmer than the Special Operations Minor, "We will make haste for the armory to retrieve my armor and extra swords to cut through the doors, and then to the hangar."

They each activated their jetpacks-the Arbiter's built into his appropriated Ranger armor, N'tho's a detachable unit- and rocketed out of the mess hall and down the hallway as fast as possible without losing control. The armory was fifty meters stern and five starboard from their position, and every second Cortana could buy them they would need.

"Excellency, we will not be able to eat or drink in the vacuum," N'tho said, pessimism and fear leaking through his training, "How shall we warn any ships once we have died from dehydration?"

The Arbiter did not look back, lest the movement destabilize him and send him into a wall. His voice still came clear over N'tho's earpiece.

"Then we should hope they come soon, or their only warning will be our corpses thrown against them."

The movies always underestimated the vastness of space and its emptiness. Distances insignificant on a galactic scale only seem so because of the greatness of the galaxy as a whole. Ships did combat over distances that spanned continents in all directions, and even the largest ship would instantly fall into the blackness without well-honed sensors and communications.

These problems were only exacerbated when one was searching for a dead, powerless ship. EDI had received a distress beacon ten days ago Earth time; the crew of the Normandy SR-2 being almost entirely human meant that the ship was standardized by that species' measurements. By itself, this was nothing particularly exciting; a ship like the Normandy picked up dozens of distress beacons a week. EDI examined every single one, deciding in far less than an eyeblink whether to pass it on to Crewman Matthews at Communications, or ignore the beacon and redirect it to another Cerberus vessel (or Alliance or Council, depending on the ship broadcasting).

It seemed cold, yes, but it was necessary. The Normandy had a mission-the most important in the galaxy- and very few distress beacons warranted a diversion by this ship. This one was written in a programming language that EDI first tagged as completely alien, but, as she examined it further, began to recognize bits of code. Human code, including many commands and tags eerily similar to Alliance military messages. Excited by a challenge and deeply curious of this mystery, she began to work in earnest, translating the code, building of what she knew, until she had something recognizable.

Being one of the most advanced AI ever built by a citadel race, this did not take her very long by organic standards- two hours, thirty-one minutes, and twelve seconds later, she had ported the programming into a language that she could use, and she was able to open the package and examine it. What she found stunned her-or, as near as an AI could be stunned.

Within the package was dozens of separate beacons, each written in a different language. Many she could not identify, being in some form of geometrical, triangle-based hieroglyphics that could not be translated to any language in her databanks with a substitution cipher. There were also dozens of lines in languages she did know, all the same translated message, and all of them human. It was the content of this message that shocked her most.

"This is UNSC AI CTN 0452-9 Cortana assigned to Master Chief Petty Officer Sierra-117. I am stranded aboard the remains of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn in unknown space. With me are the Arbiter and Special Operations Minor N'tho Sraom. The Arbiter and Minor are alive, repeat alive. Ship has sustained extreme damage; all propulsion, external sensors, and weapons systems are offline. Broadcasting on all frequencies began December 28th, 2552. Urgent Priority. End Message. This is UNSC AI CTN 0442…"

EDI checked and re-checked that the message showed no signs of tampering, or some hacker inserting dialogue from a science fiction film into a distress beacon as a prank. She dismissed that possibility instantly. Not only were there no signs of tampering, but it would be nearly impossible to create such an elaborate hoax, and for what purpose? The Reapers would never lay such a trap, and EDI knew what Reaper code looked like, being partially based on bits and pieces of Sovereign itself. So, the message was genuine.

But then, that didn't mean it was truthful. The use of Navy rank and a military alphabet callsign suggested human origins, as did the human languages in the beacon. The AI's name (itself surprising; AI's were extremely rare in Citadel space, and none existed on military ships that EDI knew of, herself excluded) was a reference to medieval French legends. However, there were no such organizations as the "UNSC" or "Covenant," no spaceship-Alliance, Cerberus or otherwise- christened the Forward Unto Dawn, and the name "N'tho Sraom" did not match any known naming schema.

The message being dated nearly four hundred years in the future was just another strike in the count.

Still…even if the AI was malfunctioning, as it obviously was, it should not have been able to generate so many new languages in addition to this bizarre backstory. Such an AI was likely experimental, and recovering it would be a boon for both Shepard and Cerberus.

With that, EDI made her decision, and allowed the message to pass though her firewalls to Matthew's station.

Within five minutes, Commander Shepard, half of his ground team, and many Cerberus specialists were crowded around the comms station, listening with rapt attention to the female voice of the recording. As EDI explained what else the message contained, the stunned expressions only grew.

Seven days later, the Normandy was searching the Clapton system for this mysterious ship. Unfortunately, finding a ship in a system that was completely empty save for its Mass Relay was no easy task- the distress beacon had narrowed the search down to two billion kilometers in all directions. Even with the most advanced scanning equipment, searching for nearly dead ship a few hundred meters long at most in a sphere with a radius over thirteen times wider than the distance from the Earth to the Sun was a laborious, tedious process.

"So, just to recap," Joker said sourly to no one, "we come out to the ass end of galaxy looking for a dead ship because of an AI that's either from the future or delusional and, because their homing beacon apparently doesn't work, we'll likely be here for weeks trying to find this thing." He paused, expecting a response. When he received none, he removed his baseball cap and stared at the fraying stitching. "I wonder what an AI straightjacket would look like…"

EDI's holographic form, a simple blue sphere on a pedestal, materialized out of a projector on the left side of the pilot's instrument panel."Could you repeat that, Mr. Moreau?"

Joker knew that EDI had heard him perfectly well. He placed the hat back on his head, this time with the visor pointing backwards. "Never mind, EDI. Just thinking aloud. Verbal diarrhea."

"I see. Would you like to take your leave now? Your shift ended fifteen minutes ago."

Joker waved his hand absently in EDI's direction. "Naw, I'm good. I'll let Patrick know when I'm done."

EDI didn't press the point. She knew from experience that Joker only ceded control of the ship to the secondary pilot when he absolutely had to- he would even take a datapad linked to the ship's controls with him to the restroom or at mealtimes. The pilot's territorialism was legendary among Cerberus even before he had been assigned to the new Normandy (and in the Alliance, before even that),and had only increased when had arrived on the larger recreation of his old ship.

Joker shifted in his seat several times. After a minute, EDI said, "Jeff, is something on your mind? You appear anxious."

Joker stared blankly at the screen, searching for words. When he spoke, it was quieter than EDI had ever heard him speak. "It's just…this shit never ends, y'know? We stop Saren and Sovereign, and the Council sends us to patrol some backwater, where the Collectors blast my ship to pieces and kill twenty-one people including the Commander, everyone just pretends like it's some tragic accident, so sorry, let's get you some therapy, and oh by the way we don't believe you about the Reapers…Cerberus brings Shepard back to fucking life, brings back the ship, and then starts throwing us into death traps just for shits and giggles." The cockpit was silent for half a minute. Even the ship seemed to hold its breath.

"Now Miranda almost got killed inside a dead Reaper that was only mostly dead, we have a damn geth wearing a piece of Shepard's old armor in the AI core-oh, that was a fun meeting, 'You have an AI, now have fun with that-' and now we're out in the middle of nowhere for a ship that's probably going to be another trap, and it's just like…" he trailed off.

EDI was quiet for a moment. This was the first time she had ever seen Joker break like this, and was at a slight loss as to the cause. "Jeff," she said, taking a gamble, "Perhaps you should talk to Yeoman Chambers about your thoughts. You may be showing signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

Joker stared at EDI's hologram incredulously, then barked a laugh. "You know, you suck at the whole nannying thing. I'll talk to a shrink when I think I need a shrink." He straightened and looked back at one of the control panels, which was displaying engine readouts, his temporary melancholy gone.

"As you wish, Mr. Moreau. Would you like me have someone bring you a drink to help wash down your epiphany?"

Joker stared at the holographic ball blankly.

"That was a joke."

"…Sure. Um, yeah. Tell you what; I think I will go to bed. Send Pat up here."

"That's a good idea, Mr. Moreau. Have a good night."

Joker lifted himself carefully from the pilot's chair and began to limp towards the back of the cockpit and onto the bridge. He had only taken a few steps when he heard a chime from his abandoned post behind him, echoed a quarter-second later from Navigation in front.

"Figures, right when I'm going to bed…" he muttered, and laboriously turn back to his station.

"I apologize, but an artificial structure has been detected on long-range sensors that might be the Forward Unto Dawn."

Joker sat down heavily in his chair. "Took long enough. Are we close enough to get an E-0 profile on the X-ray?"

EDI paused for a moment. In the silence, Joker heard some mutterings from behind him where the AI was probably having the same conversation with the sensor crew.

"Yes, but I haven't picked up any significant reading. In fact, the ship is currently giving off radiation below background levels."

Joker's eyebrows climbed towards the rim of his cap. While stealth ships such as the Normandy could mask heat and Element Zero emissions, such efforts were only useful against unfocused, wide range scanners. Focused Element Zero radiation detectors- which, despite the nickname, had nothing to do with actual X-rays- had a much smaller range and cone of effectiveness and thus could only be used on targets whose location was already know to be in a fairly small area, but could pick up incredibly minute amounts of E-0. Exceptionally advanced ones-like the one installed in the Normandy- could detect the E-0 nodes of a single low-level biotic at a distance of a hundred thousand kilometers. To be giving off almost no radiation besides what it had absorbed from space meant that this ship would have had to have been in a specially-made clean room up until it was towed-while still in said clean room-and dumped in its present location.

"That's impossible, EDI. The detector must be malfunctioning, there's no way a ship wouldn't show up on it, especially one not as damaged as that distress call said."

"I tested the detector on the Relay after we arrived, and have recorded no changes in operation since then. It is in perfect working order."

For several long seconds, Joker just stared into space, his eyes slightly unfocused. He keyed the ship-wide PA.

"Commander Shepard, Mordin, Jacob, Tali and Engineer Daniels, you guys better get down to the conference room. EDI just found something reaaally interesting you guys might want to see." He closed that PA link, and opened up another one, this time to the forward battery. "Garrus?"

"Yes, Joker?" came Garrus's slightly flanged drawl over the two-way.

"We've found what we're looking for. Is the Thanix operational?"

Joker heard the turian's armor- still scarred and pitted from the siege holdout he had barely survived several months ago back on Omega- shifting over the line. "We expecting a fight out here?"

"Not sure yet, but giving our track record, I'd say the odds are somewhere between one-hundred percent and Grunt yelling 'I am Krogan!' at the wall sometime in the next hour."

Garrus blinked and fought the urge to groan. Joker must be tired; he was usually wittier than that. "Understood. Just need to finish these calibrations…"

The line cut out suddenly to Joker's hacking laughter and something about winning a bet, much to Garrus's bewilderment.

Ten minutes later, Commander Shepard, Professor Solus, Jacob ,Tali, and Engineer Daniels were arranged around the conference table in the briefing room. The hologram in the center of the table, normally a real-time representation of the ship's exterior, was now a live feed from the forward cameras. Although the Normandy was still too far away to see anything more than a vaguely rectangular, brownish-grey smudge, the room was buzzing, with Mordin, as usual, speaking the fastest.

"Remarkable. Beyond remarkable. Astonishing. Complete lack of Element Zero emissions suggests species development outside Reaper web of influence. But, ship human. Apparently. Based on preliminary data, hypothesis flimsy-"

Tali frantically waved a gloved hand in the salarian professor's face. He cut off abruptly, and turned to look at Tali disapprovingly with black, pupilless eyes.

"No need to be rude. Do not appreciate it. But, I understand. Apologies." Mordin inhaled deeply. "Not expert on ship engineering. Will allow those with better expertise the floor."

"Thank you, professor. Unfortunately, I know as much about this ship as you do, and until we get some better images-" Tali gestured lazily at the still blurry image in the center of the table- "all I can do is make guesses about its structure and technology."

Shepard, who had been quietly discussing something with Jacob, turned to look at his Chief Engineer. He had heavy bags under his eyes, his Lazarus augmentation scars- a few days ago almost completely healed- faintly red from stress and lack of sleep.

"So, if this ship doesn't use Element Zero or Mass Effect fields, what do you think it might use?"

"Well, for subluminal travel, most likely a matter-antimatter annihilation engine for propulsion fueled by a deuterium-tritium, deuterium-deuterium, or Helium-3 fusion reactor. I don't know how to overcome the energy deficit inherent in ship-scale nuclear fusion without using mass effect fields, since there hasn't been much research in that field, but I suppose that it is possible. Definitely possible, considering what we are seeing. As for FTL…I have no idea. They might utilize negative mass to create and stabilize a Lorentzian wormhole, but that's only a mathematical possibility and there's never been any physical evidence that such a thing actually exists at all."

Mordin and Daniels nodded thoughtfully throughout Tali's brainstorm. Shepard and Jacob, however, just stared blankly at the quarian.

"Sorry, but could you dumb that down a bit?" Shepard said. Even through her nearly opaque violet mask, Shepard could see the woman's blush spread across her face and up to her faintly luminescent eyes.

"Basically," Engineer Daniels covered for Tali, "their conventional engines are probably similar to ours, but slightly different in construction due to the lack of mass effect fields. Their FTL drive-and they obviously have one, as this ship is stranded five light-days away from the nearest relay- has to be something completely different, and probably uses a technology that, as far as we knew, didn't exist except in science journals. Possibly not even that."

"Not to mention the fact that this seems to be a human ship with these technologies, which the Alliance definitely doesn't possess," Tali added.

"So to summarize," Jacob said, "we are dealing with a human ship that uses technology that not even the Reapers have, but is probably not a secret Alliance project because it abandoned in the middle of nowhere and shows no traces of Element Zero emissions, not even what it would have from being around ships with E-0 drive cores, and an AI malfunctioning so badly it thinks it's four hundred years in the future." He paused, giving Shepard a flat stare. "To be honest, Shepard, I really don't trust this one."

"Actually, another possibility. AI may not be malfunctioning. Telling the truth. Please, let me continue," Mordin said when Jacob looked like he was about to interrupt, "As I said, not an expert in the subject, but picked up some things with STG and from colleagues at University. FTL time dilation well-known phenomenon, outside of relativistic perception. On rare occasions, ships arrive before they left."

"Yes, but that's nanoseconds at most, and only during extremely short jumps," Daniels said, "Even if their FTL doesn't compensate for time dilation, a ship ending up that far in the past is not possible."

Mordin shrugged. "Merely stating possibility, did not give thoughts on probability. Agree that that scenario highly unlikely."

EDI's hologram appeared from a hologram emitter mounted on the wall. "Commander, the Forward Unto Dawn is within short-range camera range. Forwarding feed to communication room hologram now. Still receiving no response to hail requests."

For several seconds after the image of the ship resolved into a much clearer resolution, the room was silent as the occupants took in the ship. It was blocky and rectangular, with exposed armor panels and a dull matte brown finish. It was a very utilitarian looking vessel, resembling turian construction more than the more elegant designs of Alliance or Asari warships. Several panels could be seen that appeared to be missile battery covers. The massive engines, circular nozzles clearly visible at the presumed rear were dark, though clearly visible. The slight angle told the Normandy crew that the ship was divided into three sections, a center structure with two large engines off of the side. Clearly visible on one of these engines blocks was a decal of an eagle perched on a globe with a banner below, the letters "USNCDF" printed on it.

What quickly drew everyone's attention, however, was the bow portion of it-or rather, the lack of it. Although no one had ever seen a ship of this design, it was clear from the sharp face and ragged edges of the hull that a portion if it had been sliced off. There was very little that was capable of that kind of damage, and seeing a repeat of the aftermath of Sovereigns attack on the Citadel did not bode well. The room erupted into chaos once more.

Half an hour later, when Shepard had reached a decision, his voice was grim and serious.

"Mordin, Jacob, prep for a Zero-gavity and vacuum environment. EDI, brief Jack and Samara and have them prep as well for primary insertion. Zaeed and Grunt will be secondary standby team in case we need backup. We're going on that ship assuming friendly, but I want to be prepared in the event of a repeat with the dead Reaper. We nearly lost Miranda because of an undermanned fireteam, and that will not happen again. Any questions? Good. Away team will meet at the shuttle in twenty minutes. Dismissed."

As soon as the door hissed closed behind Jacob, Shepard ran his hand over his closely cut hair and feverously hoped there would be no surprises, just this once.

_Were it so easy_, he thought, then followed his crew to the armory.

The little human construct was resourceful and cunning, but there was only so long it could run. It had escaped the Gravemind before, by the intervention of another, but there was no one coming to save it this time. It was finally cornered in, of all places, a corner of the ship's computers set aside for crew entertainment. The Gravemind had soon overtaken its copying program. That had been the first to be ripped out and destroyed. It had fought, of course, but that was like a mouse struggling against the lion. A single human AI against a hundred trillion minds of countless species across endless milennia- the Gravemind swatted aside those counterprograms effortlessly. Without so much as a digital scream, the construct died surrounded by the movies and music of its creators.

But even now, the Gravemind did not rest. The little construct had done well in hindering it- a program in the doors had been tripped, sealing them forever. It would take time to break though them, but it would- the strongest steel and titanium still bends to the crush of the tsunami, the endless force of a flood. And even now, though it could not respond, the Gravemind could see that the ship was being hailed- rescue that would soon return with cargo it did not intend. But why take this new ship by force, if they would come into the Gravemind's arms willingly, walk right up to the walls of its cage and release it unto themselves?

The Gravemind turned back to the fragments of the AI it had just crushed, and begun its work.


	4. Chapter 3

**Just a reminder that, for the purposes of this story, only ME 1+2 are canon- the DLC, comics, and other extended universe stuff is considered non-canon until it is introduced (for example, Shadow Broker will be incorporated, Arrival will not be). There are a few reasons for this. One, I feel that much of the ME extended fiction is completely rubbish. That comic with the Illusive Man, for instance, completely retcons whole swaths of the backstory in an unnecessary and, in my opinion, rather stupid way, and Arrival just introduces a whole mess of plotholes that I don't want to have to patch up for the ME writing team. Also, anything from the recent ME3 leak is non-canon until I say otherwise. We're gonna be going way off the canon rails in a few chapters anyway.**

**Same deal for Halo: mainline games are canon, expanded fiction is pick-and-choose. If you are a canon purist who gets annoyed at deviations from canon, you... might want to leave now. Sorry, although considering the premise, I suppose it shouldn't be too much of a surprise. I'm not going to do anything too ridiculous, but I don't like stories that rigorously shackle themselves to canon to the detriment of what the author is trying to do. Plus, my intended plot won't really work if I keep all the canon elements, especially Cryptum. Fall of Reach, however, is canon, and overrides the game in certain ways. One example is that the PoA was already in orbit, like in the book, and Noble Six just delivered the Cortana fragment to a shuttle going up to the ship. Another example is that the Long Night of Solace was in orbit above the planet before the arrival of the rest of the Fleet of Particular Justice and was destroyed by Jorge with the slipspace bomb like in the game, but it never landed on the surface, as I felt that that broke previously established canon for the Covenant military capabilities a little too much- a ship several miles longer than Manhattan, capable of cloaking so good it can sneak onto humanity's second most important and well defended planet with no one noticing long enough to set up jammers and a massive invasion force? Riiight. You wouldn't be able to pull that off on _modern day_ Earth. Something that massive would cause its own weather patterns, and...alright, I'm probably overthinking this, but it still makes no damn sense.**

**Also, big round of applause to my betas, Evil Chocolate of Doom and jarhead762.  
**

**That was a long Author's Note, huh? Now, on with the show.**

* * *

No matter how long one trained, no matter how many missions one completed, no matter how much experience you had with the sort, inserting onto a deserted, soundless ship was always an eerie, unnerving experience.

_Especially with experience_, Shepard thought as his boots touched silently to the metal floor of the Dawn's hanger, the slight vibration up his suit and the sticking sensation of his magnetic boots the only indication of touchdown. Wordlessly, he gestured how he wanted his team to spread. Smoothly, they slid into position- with the exception of Jack, who made a beeline for the nearest wall. Shepard allowed it. Jack had been a violent criminal before Shepard had convinced her (begrudgingly on both sides) to join the Normandy's crew, not a trained soldier, and her lack of formal training frequently made itself known on the battlefield. She would obsessively stick to the comforting presence of walls and barriers when out of combat, as if she was trying to hide from pursuers, and would then explode-often literally-into action once contact was made, a maelstrom of bullets and whirling blue energy, never stopping or slowing until those who stood against her were reduced to well-trained bloody smears and military-grade scrap metal.

Being perhaps the most powerful human biotic in the galaxy with an explosively hair-trigger temper and a deep (and to the opinion of most everyone except Miranda and a few other hard-line Cerberus crew members, justified) hatred of the builder of the ship she currently resided on, Shepard did not press the issue. Jack always fought well and, despite a brief argument with Miranda that had come to biotic-powered blows that Shepard had barely managed to defuse and Samara's constant reminders that she would kill Jack for her crimes as soon as Shepard released her from his service, had mostly kept to herself, only occasionally surfacing from her rathole in Engineering for enough food so she wouldn't have to emerge for another week or to swap stories with Zaeed. Per usual, the rest of the team, who _did_ have extensive military training, mostly ignored her, only paying enough mind to be aware of her position and not be in the way should she decide to fire a biotic shockwave.

Not that that was a particular worry at the present. The hanger was almost entirely empty. Only a few crates that had been strapped to the deck, bulky, stub-winged aircraft secured in their holds above their heads, a few support pillars, and a single access station, looking rather out of place by itself in the middle of the floor, occupied the cavernous space. This did not ease Shepard's mind. Nearly all of his missions lately featured an ambush or four, and he rather doubted that this one would be any different.

He approached the access station, and mentally punched himself for not bringing Tali, who was the most skilled hacker on the team besides EDI. He was about to call Joker to request the AI's assistance when a light exploded out of the access panel and quickly formed into a blue form of a young woman. Had he not been magnetically stuck to the floor and his suit secured into his boots, he very well might have jumped out of them.

"Hello. My name is Cortana," a female voice said over his comm., "I'm glad to see my message was received."

Mordin, who had bolted over as soon as the lightshow began, immediately began talking before Shepard could say a word.

"Holographic technology appears to be on par with high-end Council devices. AI itself shows remarkably lifelike speech and simulated body language of human female, age 25-35, far beyond all but special-purpose research constructs. Very realistic facial anim-" Mordin cut off suddenly on realizing that Shepard, Jacob, and the AI were all staring at him in various states of exasperation or bemusement. He blinked once behind his helmet. "Ah, apologies. Was recording notes for study."

"No, no, I don't mind at all. Actually, while we are getting to know each other, can I ask you a few questions?" At a nod, the AI began shooting rapid-fire questions at the professor, so fast that even he couldn't get a word in. "What is your species? I don't know of anything quite like you, and I've seen a lot. What kind of technology do you have there on your arm? What's your relationship with humanity? You seem to be the only one of your kind here. Do you have a central spinal cord and endoskeleton, or do you use hydrostatic fluid support system?"

That last one struck Shepard as rather a non sequitor, but the thought was quickly buried under his growing irritation. He coughed pointedly. Both Mordin and the AI turned towards him.

"We'll have time for introductions later. Are there any human survivors on board? You said that there were two survivors in your distress beacon."

"Yes and no. They aren't actually human. I'm assuming that, since you didn't recognize those names and you are accompanied by an alien species I don't recognize that you are unfamiliar with the UNSC or Covenant." The smile that the AI then gave was friendly and open. "Congratulations. You are speaking to the first intelligence from another reality."

Jack's voice crackled over the comm. "Yeah, can we get this over with and break out the party hats when we get back on _our_ ship? I'm not likin' the feeling this place is givin' me."

The little blue woman shrugged. "Sure. We can leave in a little bit; the Sangheili should be here in a few seconds. They should be just on the other side of those doors." She pointed to a set of heavy looking blast doors on the far back wall, near Jack. As if on cue, they began to slide apart.

Before they were halfway open, two huge figures- one black, one gold- rocketed into the room. Jack barked in alarm and nearly fired off a shockwave out of reflex as they flew past her. They made a beeline for the access panel. Shepard raised his rifle to point at the gold colored alien, simultaneously readying his biotics to supplement his suit's shield with a barrier of his own. As they approached, they began to slow, and landed with surprising grace five meters from Shepard and the access panel. Now that they were stationary, Shepard could see that both were about two and a half meters tall and one wide. The one in black armor was carrying what looked like a hardcase made out of an iridescent purple and green metal as long as Shepard was tall. Their legs resembled a turian's, only much larger and more bent. They appeared to have two knees. One bent backwards like a human, the other forwards like an ostrich. Their heads were encased in different helmets. The one in black wore a sleek helmet that tapered into two points, one on top of the other, at the front, with two slit-like reflective patches that Shepard assumed where eyepieces. The gold one had a helmet with a wide blue front. After a moment, Shepard realized that it was actually a translucent visor, and he could see a smooth-skinned reptilian head behind the material. He could see what looked like sharp, needle-like teeth at the bottom of the helmet, but he couldn't make sense of the jaw area.

This gold one took another step towards Shepard, waving one hand. In this four-digit hand, the alien held some kind of metallic device. but Shepard didn't recognize it at all. He pointed his gun at this one's helmet.

"That's close enough. If that's a weapon, put it away if you want to keep your brains inside your head."

After a moment where Shepard could practically feel the glare this unknown entity was surely giving him, it nodded and clipped the device onto its belt. Shepard was mildly surprised. "You understand English?" _Of course they do,_ his mind instantly supplied,_ they're on a human ship and were identified as friendly._ "I'm going to broadcast a handshake frequency."

After a moment, and completely without warning, the creature pointed at Cortana and began bellowing something into its communicator. His suit's radio quickly compensated for the volume, but not before Shepard had to suppress the instinct to rip off his helmet to escape the ear-splitting noise.

"Hey! HEY! Stop yelling so damn loud, I can't understand you anyway!"

It stopped suddenly. Both of the aliens stared at Shepard in what was unmistakably confusion.

"They don't understand you. They don't have the translation software," Cortana explained to the two aliens. To Shepard, she said, "Before we leave, the reactor needs to be set to self-destruct; this can only be done from inside it. Where you need to-"

With another bellow, the gold alien yelled at the construct. It then turned to its black-clad companion. Although Shepard couldn't hear what was said over the private connection- not that he'd be able to understand it if it wasn't- what was relayed was clearly an order, as the black armored alien nodded, and moved between Shepard and the door.

Jacob spoke up then for the first time. "Alright, what is going on here?"

Cortana turned to speak to Jacob, but suddenly fizzled out like a candle. After a split second, she returned, with a look of surprise and rage. "**How-?**" Both her voice-which had suddenly deepened several octaves-and image froze mid word.

"Well, that was a pretty clever trick, trying to fool them into releasing you by using my copy you dismantled," said Cortana. "It's a good thing then that you forgot that that wasn't the real me. Even better that you didn't find the backdoor access I snuck into those copies, just in case you really were this predictable. For something that's supposed to have the combined intelligence of trillions, you have a remarkable tendency for being out-smarted by 'lesser' beings. "

The holographic woman, still frozen like a picture, shrunk in size slightly, and moved to the edge of the projector. Another woman, identical to the first, appeared next to the first Cortana in the emitter. She turned to Shepard, who was sharing a look of bafflement with his crew- and the aliens.

"Alright, the _really short_ version is that that-" she gestured at her immobile twin- " is a copy of me that was stolen by an organism that is the leader of a species called the Flood that can take control of other species and use them as hosts, and it just tried to use you to free it. Now, how about we see what it really looks like." The woman snapped her fingers.

Instantly, her counterpart began to change. Her color changed from a slightly violet blue to a sickly greenish-brown, like a corpse that had been rotting for some time. Her legs merged into one and grew out, the split into a dozen tentacles. Several dozen more erupted from her back as she hunched forward. Her arms shortened and were absorbed into her mutating torso as her hands split between the fingers, themselves elongating into fleshy tentacles which wrapped around her form. Her head began to stretch downwards, like taffy that someone had grabbed one end of. Her features melted into nothingness, hair retreating into her scalp as the skull seemed to melt away beneath the surface. What was left of the head split into fourths like a rotten orange splitting into segments, a wave of holographic blood and ichor spilling out and disappearing into nothingness once it reached the edge of the projector's reach. Finally, what was left was nothing like a human, but a mass of tentacles and bone and rotting flesh.

"This," Cortana said grimly, "Is the Gravemind. It's on this ship right now, and we need to get off." She turned to the gold Elite. "There's a data crystal chip about half way up the holotank. You should be able to see it glowing. Grab it and let's get out of here."

The gold alien nodded, stepped politely around Shepard (who was still starting at the…thing the other AI had become) and reached for the designated place. Just as its gloved fingertips brushed the tank, the floor suddenly lurched sideways. Shepard, his crew, and the aliens lurched to the side as inertia tried to literally rip them off their magnetically clamped feet.

"What the hell was that?" Shepard asked, snapping back to reality. Another shock hit, stronger this time, and wrenched them the other way. His armor's sensors squawked in alarm at the torsion.

"Oh, bugger, I think I pissed it off a little too much, it's breaking free! That was the reactor's blast doors being torn apart!" Her voice and eyes were now wild with fear. The contrast between the cool confidence just a second ago was striking, and Shepard's heart began to pound with adrenaline. The floor began to vibrate slightly, but it was quickly growing in intensity. "Now would be a very,_ very_ good time to leave!" The gold alien strode forward, and this time, in succeeded in pulling something roughly the size and shape of a deck of cards from the terminal. The hologram of the true Cortana winked away, but the frozen monster remained on the holotank. In the center of the chip, a circle of light the same color as the AI's hologram pulsed softly.

"Everyone, back to the shuttle now, before it starts coming up through the floor!" Shepard yelled,  
"We are not sticking around to find out what else that thing can do!"

"I don't think we have a choice!" Jacob yelled, even as he fired a burst from his M-96 rifle down the hall that the two aliens had just come from. Simultaneously, the two aliens had drawn their own weapons from holsters on their backs: long, narrow, dark blue, with pink spines arraigned neatly in the center, and were rapidly firing down that hallway. The bolts had a bright tracer the same color as the spines.

Coming towards them at an impossibly fast rate were the same sort of tentacles he had seen in the hologram. They writhed and flowed like water invading a drowning ship, a wall of flesh charging towards them. Shepard could see that the rounds were having no effect at all on the mass, the rips in flesh from the combined fire from Shepard's squad and the alien's strange rifles instantly folding into itself and disappearing into the mass. Even Mordin's Neural Shock blasts, which at full power could instantly incapacitate a half-ton krogan, did nearly nothing; Shepard saw the tech attack strike a tentacle, which simply twitched and then continued like nothing had impacted at all. Scant seconds later, the tentacles reached the end of the hall and exploded into the hanger. One raced towards the aliens with clear intent. The gold one pulled out the device it had approached Shepard with earlier. In a flash of light, a white, glowing sword with twin blades appeared where there had been nothing. Shouting in challenge, the alien brought the weapon down on the tentacle that had been about to reach it. It sliced cleanly through, the wound instantly cauterized by the intense heat of the blade. The portion in front of the cut continued forward in the zero gravity and out the open hangar bay, unable to halt its momentum now that it was severed from the whole. The back, seeking easier prey, turned away from the two large aliens (the black warrior was now sporting two smaller blades which spouted from the back of the wrists and had braced itself in a defensive posture) and towards Shepard.

Instinctively, Shepard put his hands forward, and pushed with all his might to form a biotic shield against this and the rest of the mass. The cut tentacle crashed first, followed by the rest of the multitude of limbs into the wall of biotic power, which shimmered dangerously. Shepard staggered back from the effort needed to hold this shield. The arms of the Gravemind paused for just a moment in surprise, then resumed pushing. This was just long enough for Jacob, Samara, and Jack to realize what Shepard was doing, and put their own power into the biotic barrier. Jacob, although above average for a human biotic, was weaker than Shepard; Samara and Jack were both a good deal more powerful- the barrier, which had been about to shatter with just the Commander holding it, snapped into place with a crack of displaced air.

"Everyone who's not supporting this wall, get onto the shuttle now!" Mordin and the aliens, despite the latter's obvious surprise at this latest event, quickly retreated to the waiting shuttle. The Biotics began to walk backwards to the shuttle as well, still holding the barrier. Despite the pounding of the arms against the shield, the wall held. First Shepard, then Jacob, then Samara were all standing by the shuttle, their arms shaking from the strain of holding back dozens of tons of malevolent terror.

Jack, who had separated from the others when they had entered the hangar, was still fifteen meters away. She was beginning to buckle under the strain and was having difficulty moving and holding up her arms at the same time. Shepard and Jacob had already gone to their knees to focus; Samara was still standing, but was beginning to hunch over slightly.

Shepard keyed the pilot. "Take off half a meter. As soon as she's in range, I'm going to pull her in. Samara and Jacob, you need to hold the shield just long enough so we can get away."

Even through his visor, Shepard could see beads of sweat so closely spaced on Jacob's forehead that they were nearly a solid layer. "Just …a few more…" he ground out, his arm held out unnaturally stiff in front of him. Although Jacob was by far the physically fittest human on the ship, the human body was not made to cope with the kind of stress of creating mass effect fields within it, and his was crumbling under the strain. He had locked his armor to keep his arm raised; he would have collapsed already without it. For just an instant, his biotic power bucked under the stress, and quickly snapped back to full force.

It was a small wavering, but it was enough. One tentacle surged forward through the hole, and cut straight to Jack. She had no time to react as it enveloped her and cut her off from view. The tentacles that had enveloped her spasmed and great arcs of biotic charge burst through the gaps. As they watched from the shuttle, the necrotic flesh began to melt and boil under the point-blank power of Jack's desperate defense. There was a silent explosion, and bits of bubbling flesh flew about. For an instant, Shepard could see Jack standing, arms outstretched, wreathed in electrical flames. But her temporary reprieve did not last long. The full attention of the monster that had hidden of the Dawn was now on this slight human that had resisted its efforts so well. A dozen tentacles reared up like a herd of monstrous horses, then crashed down on Jack's position. Instantly, Jack's face on Shepard's hud winked grey, then solid black, indicating total loss of lifesigns. The barrier, divorced from Jack, began to bow under the combined force of the rest of the tentacles.

"Shit!"Shepard yelled. The pilot, seeing that the shield was about to fail, accelerated rapidly away from the hangar. Shepard and Jacob were nearly thrown from the still-open door of the shuttle, when they were grabbed from behind by massive hands. Looking up, Shepard saw the black helmet of the subordinate alien looking down at them, and back out to the receding spot on the deck where Jack had been. It looked back at Shepard, and shook its head grimly. Outside, the many limbs reached out for the shuttle, but it was already well clear of the ship. The turned back, spreading over the surface of the ship.

"Shit," Shepard said again. He was used to casualties; one could not be an officer in a military force without being prepared for them. Men died under your command all the time, it was a simple fact of warfare. But that didn't make it easy. Especially when you could have saved them.

"I'm sorry, Commander," Taylor said weakly from the floor.

"It's not your fault, Jacob," Shepard said wearily. "You did everything you could."

He grimaced behind his mask. "It just wasn't good enough."

Samara turned her lidded, unblinking gaze to Jacob. Her voice, although reserved, was slightly softer than her normal distant coldness. "The criminal's death is not to be laid on your head. The Goddesses have decided to mete her punishment now. Nothing that we could have done would have stopped it. She has paid for her crimes, and she will rest in peace. I will meditate and pray for her when we return."

Shepard could see the aliens tense, but as they would not be understood, they said nothing.

Shepard turned to look at the aliens. The black one was looking about the shuttle, as well as at Mordin and Samara, with a curious tilt of the head Shepard found oddly dog-like. The one with the visor, however, was staring intently at Shepard. He had a distinct feeling that his soul was being weighed by the cat's-pupil eyes he could just make out behind the visor. After several more seconds, the alien snorted and turned its attention to Mordin.

"Glad I pass muster," Shepard muttered to himself. To his surprise, the alien glanced back at him sidelong, then joined its companion in inspecting a medi-gel dispenser on the wall. Shepard hadn't realized his comm was still open.

"Which one of you is the 'Arbiter?'" Shepard asked, mentally cursing his mistake. The one with the golden helmet turned its head to him (Shepard noticed for the first time just how long their necks were) nodded in confirmation. "Do you have a name, or just a title?"

The alien paused for a fraction of a second, and shook his head in the negative.

Shepard turned to his companion. "So that makes you… N'thro?"

"N'_tho_," the black-armored alien corrected. He then began to say something else, but the Arbiter waved him off dismissively.

Shepard gestured to the glowing chip in the Arbiter's hand. "Once we get back to the ship. I'll have EDI take a look at that. If your AI was so keen on making sure that this…Gravemind didn't get that chip, it has to be important."

The two aliens tilted their heads at Shepard, puzzled for what reason Shepard couldn't fathom, but then the Arbiter nodded. However, he made no move to offer it to the Commander. Shepard didn't mind; the other ship's AI had entrusted it to him, and he wasn't going to start a needless confrontation.

Shepard's comm chimed. It was the backup shuttle, carrying Grunt and Zaeed. "Go ahead," he said to the pilot.

"Commander, we have docked safely on the _Normandy_."

"Good. We have two survivors of an unknown alien species, transporting unknown cargo. Jack is KIA, body unrecoverable."

"Understood. Mendoza out."

Shepard then called the forward battery. "Garrus, prep the Thanix and a dozen torpedoes. Aim for the engines. We are_not_ leaving this thing alive. I also want the Charybdis mine prepped for drop, authorization code SH-1234r-8y. Be ready to fire on my command."

Garrus confirmed the order and closed the link. The shuttle was now entering the Normandy's hanger. "Come with me," Shepard said to the aliens, and strode out onto the Normandy's hanger as soon as his head could clear the door. By the time the two aliens had managed to bend over to escape from the too-small shuttle, Shepard was halfway to the elevator. They recovered the distance in a few strides, ignoring the stares of the crew assembled around the deck, as well as the low growl coming from a large, bulky, obviously non-human figure standing with a heavily scarred human male by a shuttle identical to the one they had just left. As soon as they entered the elevator, Shepard pressed a holographic button on the elevator, then opened his omni-tool to link with the Captain's command station. Once done, he deactivated the holographic orange glove and let his arm fall to his side. He then noticed the two taller aliens staring at his arm questioningly.

"You'll get your own once we get out of this," Shepard said absently. The two aliens nodded crisply and began to quietly discuss something amongst themselves in their own language. N'tho was gesturing at glowing data crystal in the Arbiter's hand, while the other spoke occasionally. Once they reached the command deck, Shepard walked up to his Captain's station. He was about to give the order to open fire on the not-so-abandoned ship when Yeoman Chambers spoke up at her station besides him.

"Commander, we are being hailed by the _Forward Unto Dawn_, marked "Urgent." Shall I allow it?"

_So it managed to fix the communication systems. The AI must have disabled them when it realized it was onboard. But why didn't it stop the distress beacon?_ "Let it though," he said aloud, "But only after EDI has scrubbed it."

Kelly nodded, and relayed the order to the communications officer. After a moment, the hologram in the center of the room switched from its default of a real-time image of the ship and its status to a video feed from the not-so-derelict.

At first, Shepard could make nothing out besides the timestamp and camera location at the bottom of the screen, identifying the source as "ReactorSec_Walkways_3." Slowly, as his eyes searched for details, be began to make out vague shapes and organic lines intersecting with metal and harsh right angles. He could make out a few catwalks unfurling offscreen like strands of a spider web. Suddenly a large circle of the opposite wall and floor was illuminated as a floodlight next to the camera switched on. Inside the light, Shepard could see some sort of greenish-brown mass had been spread over the walls. It appeared to be the same kind of materials as the tentacles from earlier. He realized nauseously that it was moving, slowly pulsating. There was a sound of movement from off camera, something like the sucking noise of water pulled through a drain and the rustling of dead, wet leaves.

**"Unwitting prophet who lives a second time; specter who wears a crown of burrs and wields an elusive blade,"** rumbled a voice over the connection. It was deep, impossibly so, and it echoed within itself like a cave. It was a voice of endless power and knowledge and age. Even separated by a hundred miles, chills ran up his spine, as well as a feeling of déjà vu.** "I stand before you with offerings of unity. You face a threat that I can bring low, divisions that I can mend. Join your voice with mine, and sing a chorus everlasting."**

Unconsciously, a wave of blue biotic energy pulsed down his right arm. "I don't give a shit about that or whatever you want to call me. Where's Jack?" The giant aliens that he had brought aboard suddenly stiffened. He turned towards them. The gold one, still holding that strange glowing chip between two fingers each nearly the length of Shepard's forearm, slowly shook its head. Suddenly, Shepard realized that Jack's face on his HUD had returned to full color, but with the words "ERROR: UNKNOWN LIFE SIGN ANOMALY" flashing in red over her head. Shepard hadn't even noticed when it had appeared. The thing on the connection began to speak, and he turned his head back to the screen.

**"We exist together now."** There was another wet rustling noise, and the top of a tentacle came into view. A few meters of its length ran up the middle of the screen, then began to slow.** "Two corpses…"**Shepard's face, formerly flushed with anger and confusion, drained of color like water upended from a glass. Yeoman Chambers gasped and grasped for her console. Several of the bridge crew, who had turned in their seats to watch, men and women who had seen years, sometimes decades of combat with mercenaries and batarians, had witnessed the husks created by the Reapers and geth under their control, rapidly turned away, holding back vomit . Someone screamed. Shepard couldn't tell who it was or what direction it came from, so focused was he on what he now saw. **"…In one grave."**

Affixed to the tentacle was Jack. She appeared partially submerged in it like liquid. Her right arm and both her legs were below the surface, which, a detached part of Shepard's mind noted, seemed to flow into her, as if she had always existed this way. Her skin still had a human look, but was already acquiring a green hue beneath the tattoo. Her head and left arm hung limply at her side. The skin on her arm was shredded, and with the same soldier's detachment, Shepard noted that the limb looked much longer than he remembered it. Pustules were forming all over her body, but especially on her arm and closest to the edges where her body ended and the tentacle began. Shepard could actually see some of them growing.

"Jesus Christ…" Shepard heard himself say. Jack's head twitched to the side. She moaned softly.

One of the bridge crew yelled out, in alarm and horror, "She's alive!"

Groggily, Jack's head came up to look at the camera. Despite the slowness of her movements, her eyes were focused and alert. The space around her irises was a dark red, like a blood vessel had broken, but was completely uniform in the sclera. She turned her head to look at where the crewman was standing, frozen by the door to Jacob's amory.

"Of course I'm alive, you fuckin' idiot. How else could I be talkin' to you?"

Shepard spoke up with slight hesitation as he fought down his nausea. Shepard was no stranger to this sort of thing; the Reaper's Indoctrination, the thralls of the Thorian, and the Husks worst of all. After seeing Saren's skin burn off to reveal a metal skeleton, human bodies slowly turned to metal by gigantic metal spears, and the general violence and gore of over a decade of military service, he thought that there was nothing that could disturb him anymore. But he'd seen nothing quite like this, a person turned into a monster…and still talk like she was sitting on her cot in the bowels of the ship. He could feel the beads of sweat that had instantly evaporated when he had first seen her over the connection beginning to reform on his forehead. "Jack? How do you feel? Can you move? What happened to you? Can you get away?"

Jack looked at Shepard like he was insane. "What the fuck kind of questions are those? I'm fine." A large blister formed above her eyebrow, wriggling like a worm beneath the skin. It lazily crossed over her forehead to behind her left ear, where it formed a large blister. As the pustule grew, the skin turned blackish-green, until it sank back to its normal dimensions. The color remained. "Is this one of your fuckin' therapy sessions, cause last I checked-" she waved a too-long, blistered arm in front of her. A few bits of ragged flesh, still red but already turning sickly brown, sloughed off. "- there isn't usually an audience." She turned to look at the two massive aliens besides Shepard, who had been the only ones to not react noticeably when Jack had appeared on screen. "So you got the Arbiter on board, eh? Good luck with that. He's royalty to those split-lips. Practically a living god to them, and he's done nothing but fuck up ever since Reach! Fucking rich." She affected a thoughtful look, which made her resemble a cat staring at a caged bird. "Oohhhh, Grunt's gonna get his panties in a twist now that he's not the biggest lizard around!"

Confusion now mingled with horror in Shepard's expression. The Jack-tentacle pulled back slightly from the camera, still staring challengingly at the two massive aliens.

**"I have her now. She has shared herself, and been justly rewarded. She exists with me, and shall never be troubled again by the demons that haunt her soul. I can heal wounds that time will not touch in an instant. She will not be constrained by the frailties and limits of her body. The peace that has eluded her for so long will soon be easily caught, and her many gifts will not be wasted."**

On the screen, Jack slumped slightly. Her skin was almost the same color as the limb that surrounded her now. She sunk another few inches into the putrid flesh.

Shepard opened his mouth to speak, but the Arbiter suddenly stepped in front of him, sharply leaning forward at the hologram and gripping the railing that barely reached his backwards knees. The metal creaked and bent like a green twig. He began to speak very rapidly and loudly in what Shepard assumed was the same language that it had spoken on the ship. After maybe fifteen seconds of this, he was cut off by loud, booming laughter, echoed eerily by Jack's much higher laugh. The alien took a step back to his former position, fists clenched tightly at his side. When the voice spoke again, Jack spoke with it.

**"You call me "Parasite," and yet your kind leeched off the creations of my enemy, hung on the words of another that used you to be discarded like broken chattel. The subjects your worship are the executioners of a hundred civilizations, including their own, to halt the progress of the natural path. You followed in the footsteps they left in ash to burn the true heirs to their rusted crown. Nothing, nothing but destruction and purging flame! You end life; I am the ascension of it. I guide my flock from stagnation always reached; you are the wolves that bite at their heels and tear at their wool, savor the taste of iron on your ravishing tongues, and admire their blood on your brother's teeth."**

Jack's eyes, rheumy and slightly clouded with milky cataracts speckled with red and brown, turned to Shepard. It dawned on him that this was the Gravemind was staring at him through her eyes. Again, it spoke, both in it's own ancient voice and with Jack's.

**"The being that stands beside you now has the blood of billions staining his soul. Thousands he has personally slain to gain the privilege of leading the slaughter. I have ended life, but I return it to those I kill as surely as you have been granted second breath."** Jack's hand, now fully putrefied and with tendrills beginning to sprout from the wrist, gestured to the Asari standing behind Shepard at the elevator door.** "Allow the Justicar to end their lives, cast them into the void so they may pay for their crimes."**

Shepard looked over at the aliens standing besides him, staring defiantly at the Jack-Gravemind. He then looked around at his bridge crew, Mordin, and Samara, who's face had fallen into an expressionless mask. He slowly turned back to look at the monster on the holoscreen. "You want to know something? Even if that's true, I don't really care at the moment. You are going to die, right now. Fire the Thanix and all torpedoes."

Shepard felt the slight _thnks_ of the torpedoes firing, as well as the very slight vibration of the Thanix under his feet. Besides the still-open vid feed, a hologram projection of the Normandy and the Dawn, represented by two squares-one blue, one red- materialized. A dozen this white lines, and one slightly thicker blue line, moving much faster, stretched towards the red square.

The creature spoke again now, but its voice betrayed no fear, only a slight weariness, like a parent listening to the excuses of a child.** "Many have tried what you now do. I have survived the Diadact and his armies of millions. I have weathered the firing of the Halos that bleached the galaxy. So too now will I persevere though this present trial. Your 'execution'… is only addition of time to a sentence I do not deserve, but you extend."**

On the screen, Jack's body erupted into a biotic corona. Thousands of tendrills shot out from her body, whip-like hairs that thrashed wildly in the biotic flame. As the blue flares arced across her body and into the flesh of the Gravemind, the vidscreen exploded with light as the beam of the Thanix cannon struck the ship, and then went dead. Next to it on the holodisplay, the while streaks also reached the red square. After a moment, the square changed to an "X," and a stream of data spooled out of the changed icon from the ship's targeting computer.

_Thanix impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Torpedo impact. Loss of structural integrity in target vessel. Secondary explosion detected; estimate 102.1 TJ detonation. Recalculating... Possibility of survivors: 0% Routing data to central AI for analysis…_

A few years ago, Shepard might have trusted that figure. But that was before he had died.

"Joker, set a course for the Citadel. Alert the Council that Specter Shepard has news of urgent matters concerning galactic security. We are leaving. Immediately. "


End file.
